


The Boy in the North

by rosekay



Category: Captain America (2011), Iron Man (Movies), Sneedronningen | The Snow Queen - Hans Christian Andersen, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 02:03:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/pseuds/rosekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about being unmade. <i>His heart would become like ice; it did not hurt any longer, but it was there.</i> Love is for children, and Natasha will get him back.</p><p>Based on the bones of Andersen's <i>The Snow Queen.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy in the North

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Мальчик с Севера](https://archiveofourown.org/works/644018) by [Rainy_Elliot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainy_Elliot/pseuds/Rainy_Elliot)



**~The Frost and the Mirror~**

In the far north, where the skies streaked gold and the cities were eternal, there was a clever boy with a silver tongue, who knew all the secret paths of the world and built all sorts of intricate things. His father was a king, and for a long time, he did not know which king. He had a golden brother like the sun, who loved him dearly but outshone him as the sun always does with frost, which is sometimes fragile, unless the nights are long. One day, the boy discovered a terrible secret that hardened his heart, and set out into the snow until he was blue all over, his eyes red from grief and his teeth as sharp as ice.

His brother pleaded with him to come home, but it was too late, for the boy's heart was frost and his eyes like a mirror through which everything seemed wicked and rotten, even what he had once found beautiful. The boy's brother was a great warrior who had never shied from a fight, and he did not start now.

Their battle was fierce, and shook the very roof of the world so that people in faraway lands shivered and thought of their loved ones. The mirror in the boy's eyes shattered into countless pieces that scattered shining into the air. And you see, each piece had the power of the whole, and could take all joy from the world where it landed. Some were made into windows, through which people could not see their friends, and others were made into great palaces even, inside which princes became cold and hated by their people. The worst were the tiny shards that glittered briefly in the sunlight before falling all over the land unseen. We shall see what happened next.

 

**~The Robber Girl and the Boy in the Nest~**

In a floating city, there was a robber girl with red in her ledger that had bled into her hair and a boy who liked to see the world from afar. They had traveled, in the past, to a great many places and killed a great many things, and even drawn each other's blood, but the boy liked being able to see the girl, straight and true as an arrow into the sun, from his nest, and the girl drew comfort from knowing that the boy was near. She had been a robber of lives and innocence and the memory of safety, a maker of widows, and now she robbed with a purpose. Their master was a one-eyed man who was very wise, for his eyes never warred with each other over what they saw. He kept secrets so the robber girl and the boy in his nest did not worry about them. They were not brother and sister, but it did not matter.

Sometimes they did not see each other for weeks or even months at a time. The one-eyed man had tasks for them the world over. But they always came back to their customary perches. When the city floated in summer, the boy could leap from his own room to the girl's, and they would talk long into the night, or sometimes not at all, since the comfort of friends did not always require words. In the winter, when everything was wreathed in frost, he was obliged to go through the labyrinth of hallways instead, but neither of them feared the cold.

"You see," the one-eyed man told them, "if the frost dares to crawl into our city, he will be as an ant beneath my boot. Let him come."

One day, as the boy looked across the wide, gray skies, seeing many things, something caught in his eye. Beside him, the robber girl took his arm and asked him if he was well. He blinked, and blinked again, and the pain was in his chest, his heart too. The boy bent in the wind, looking at the ground, the girl's red hair caught on his cheek.

"It is gone, I think," he said at length. His heart would become like ice; it did not hurt any longer, but it was there. The robber girl held his chin in her hand because she had never known what it was not to be fierce.

"Truly?"

He shook out of her grip, scoffing, though he was patient by nature. "Of course! Why are you frowning?"

He pushed in tight and asked the robber girl if she thought it was cruel that her hair bled bright just like her hands, which were full of lives. Did she regret it? Did it unmake her in the night when she thought of all that she had done?

The boy had bitten the girl deeply, and she fled back inside the city, away from the sky and the echo of his words. The boy remained perched where he was, looking out. The gray skies were roiling now, plain and foreboding rather than the calm, beautiful expanse he thought he had seen, the sunlight weak like dirty water. In time, the air grew colder until flakes of snow began to fall, so thickly that they seemed to catch on one another and grow. Someone very tall with black hair like a raven's mourning stood high on the floating city with the boy. He was blue all over with the cold, and the boy thought him beautiful. His breath frosted the air white when he smiled, all teeth, and held out his hand.

"You have a strong heart," he said, and all the pain vanished from the boy's chest when it was touched, a spike of cold that spread like frost.

 

**~The Doctor and His Garden of Beasts~**

And what became of the red-haired robber girl when the boy was gone, whisked over mountains and valleys and endless sky to the north? The one-eyed man gave her his blessing and whispered in her ear, and she left the floating city to find the boy on her own. If she had known that he had gone north, she would not have been surprised that he should want to go where it was cold and clear and he could look down and see the rest of the world scattered beneath him. She asked the sun if he had seen the boy, but heard nothing back, for she had never done her work in the sun. She asked the shadows if they had stretched long for him as he passed, and these were her friends, the robber girl who had worked in the dark, so they gathered about her ankles and told her many secrets.

She had hunted before, with knives and the little pistols that she favored, with an innocent face, and most of all, with her cunning. She traveled across rivers and mountains, and through great cities that writhed with sweat and dirt and disease. Forward, hissed the shadows that paced her, and at length, she came upon a lonely village at the very outskirt of such a city. There was only one well, nearly dry and choked with dust, and the hut with smoke that curled out rested like a lone bud in a winter garden. The robber girl was very thirsty, and her vivid hair clung damply to her neck for she was weary as well, so she went to the door and rapped on it with her little fist.

In the hut lived a doctor with a gentle, tired smile and crooked spectacles. He looked as if the world had burst open inside him and left him exhausted as it fled. His clothes were shabby and the hut very plain, but the robber girl saw that he had fine, square hands that were steady as a mountain. On the sturdy table rested a pitcher of water that glittered pure and sweet in the dim light. When she had drunk her fill and splashed some on her face so she might think more clearly, he lifted her chin with a hand.

“Have you been sent?”

The robber girl shook her head.

The doctor did not smile, but unlatched the door in the back of the hut, so that the robber girl could step out into his garden. She had faced down men many times her size and fought monsters in all corners of the world, so she did not scream when the first beast snarled in her face, but her hands trembled and she longed for the cool touch of a blade in her hand.

It was a misshapen thing, neither lion nor snake, with a face that writhed in helpless rage.

“Have you seen him?” she asked. “The boy in the nest?”

“No,” hissed the beast. “I have slithered in all the dark places of the world, and torn brave men to pieces. What makes you think I might answer you, little girl?”

“Nothing,” said the robber girl, who did not tremble.

She had barely turned before another snapped at where her hand been only moments ago, this one rooted into the ground like a tree, but its branches dripped with viscera and a thousand vicious mouths. When she asked the same, it shivered slickly in the earth.

“I have eaten the hearts of many boys, but no boy such as that has bled near me.”

And so it went, each new creature more horrifying than the next, but the robber girl strained her fear through her words until, at last, exhausted, she returned to the little hut. There, the doctor waited quietly, but his hands were very tight clasped in front of him.

“Have you found what you came for?”

“There is a place,” said the robber girl, “where people won’t fear what you hold inside.”

The doctor surged to his feet and roared, “What do you know of beasts?”

The room trembled with his rage, and the shadows on the wall loomed very large. The girl remembered how that rage was legend, and her eyes glittered in the light. At the sour smell of her fear, he smiled, gentle and weary again in a moment’s pause. “You fear me. You know.”

For you see, what the doctor and girl both knew, was that the fiercest beast of all was curled about his heart, ready to eat the world. His bloody garden was only play.

“I do,” said the girl, and she whispered to the doctor what the one-eyed man had told her.

Outside the world seemed dark and very weary, the air cold and tight with the frost just barely held at bay, but the girl took the doctor’s hand, and the fearsome shadow cast on the wall behind them seemed to shrink, just a little.

 

**~The Soldier and the Iron-Hearted Prince~**

They had walked for a long time before the girl was obliged to rest. A crow flew so close that its black wings lit dark on her vivid hair for a moment. He greeted the girl with perfect calm.

"Friend," she called out, for sometimes the crow was a man, steady-eyed with a level voice, and he had visited the floating city before. There were many who answered to the one-eyed man.

"You are looking for the boy in the nest?" he asked, for the boy was naturally beloved of all birds. 

"I have a tame sweetheart who plays music in a kingdom to the west, and I have heard an interesting tale out of that great palace."

There was a clever prince, the crow told her, who sat the western throne. He had read all the maps in the world and built a great many things that made his kingdom thrive in iron and steel. He had a mind like quicksilver and a sharp tongue that did not always do him favors, but he was loved and he made wondrous things. They said that his uncle, the regent of his youth after his father's death, had sent assassins out to bring him the prince's living heart, but his greed had undone him.

"You do not pay hard men trinkets to kill a prince," said the crow. 

The assassins wanted the prince's mind more than his heart, his great gift to build machines of conquest, but the brave prince proved cleverer than the kingmaking assassins, and forged himself a heart of iron that gave him the strength to gain his freedom. So he returned and slew the treacherous uncle who had loved him as a boy and tried to take the very heart out of his breast as a man, and the kingdom had been whole again.

But the prince had paid a price. His heart bled metal in his chest, and he became cold and unhappy. Without a wedding, he could not become a king, and there were other greedy men who lived in the shadows. So it was decreed that the prince should wed, and the palace doors thrown open for the worthy youth of the land. Grand ladies came with their glittering trains, each lovelier than the last. Heroes who had slain monsters and brute beasts in distant lands--here, the doctor looked away and the girl squeezed his hand just once, quite silent--brought the spoils of their deeds to show the prince that they had heart enough for two. The great minds of the land came too, with new maps and books and designs, to show the prince he could have an equal beside him on the throne. But the prince was unmoved, and turned them all away.

One day, young man came to the palace, a plain sparrow amongst the glittering peacocks in his dusty traveling clothes and well-worn boots. He had no brilliant maps or wealth to recommend him, and indeed seemed very shabby compared to those who had come before.

Yet it turned out that he did not seek the prince's hand at all, but merely his wisdom. He boldly climbed the steps to where the prince sat, paying hardly any attention to all the ladies with their maids, who each had their own maid, or any of the haughty cavaliers ringed with pages and servants.

At this, the robber girl whispered the boy's name in fragile hope, for he would be travel-worn, surely, and shabby in his appearance. He was not interested in a grand marriage or a kingdom at his feet, she knew. He would be inquisitive, looking for a way home. It must be him, she thought. The crow knew no more of the story, so they set out towards the setting sun, and the robber girl felt a glimmer of warmth in her heart.

When they reached the great palace, the girl and the doctor admired the all the intricate gears and metalwork that operated its many doors, all the clever things that ran like magic, with no servants to set them in motion. What a mind, thought the doctor, to have created such things, for he had once been a great mind himself until his ambition created what lived now inside him.

"Wait here," said the crow to the girl, who was wound tight as a string with anxiety. The boy must be here, and perhaps he had even won himself a prince in the bargain, who might change the very way of the world.

At length, the crow's sweetheart emerged and gave them each a roll soft and rich to sate their hunger from the road. The girl tore at the good bread, which broke with a puff of fragrant steam.

"You must be quiet," said the sweetheart, whose very voice held notes so pure and lovely it was no wonder that royalty came to listen. They were led through curving, dark hallways and many chambers, each richer than the last, the walls hung with gleaming metal and precious jewels. At last they came to a chamber of glass that faced the roaring sea, so close that the girl and the doctor could smell the fresh salt thick in the air. It was nighttime and the prince was abed, so the girl bravely held up her lantern over the intertwined figures, and nearly gasped with joy when she saw a hint of gold in the hair, a strong brown neck.

But when the prince awoke and called the torches to life with a swift motion of his hands, she saw that the man beside him, though surpassingly fair of face and form, was not her friend after all. He was tall and well-made, with hair gilt like the sun and eyes that burned as the summer sky does, no hint of frost at all. You see, he was a brave soldier returned from a faraway war, with strength to challenge even an iron heart. His face was young but his mind was wise, for he had known the old king, the prince's father, and still carried the great shield that man had crafted. Newly woken from a deep slumber that had seen countless seasons, he had come only to seek out the son of an old friend, to see how the world had changed.

It was said, the girl and the doctor learned, that at first the kingdom feared that they would tear each other apart, for the prince, always quick with his tongue, thought the soldier old-fashioned and simple, and the soldier in turn thought the prince haughty, which he was, and cruel, which he could be, and unworthy of his father, which was a thing raw and open like a nerve. When he said as much, the prince raged for days, for he was unlucky with fathers, and his heart burned to think of it. Awful, cutting things dripped from his tongue, but the soldier knew how to use a shield, and stood his ground.

"But look," said the prince's oldest friend, a canny general who had been in the school room with him when they were young, a man as patient as a mountain. The girl saw that one had to be, to remain in the prince's confidence. "See how he paces, how his eyes are bright." And he was right, for none of the other suitors had held the prince's attention for even a moment.

"And see," said the prince's seneschal, a lady tall and fair, with skin like new cream and hair the rich color of a rising sun rather than the robber girl's own bloody banner, "how he considers his words, and how his hand goes to his heart."

"And watch," said the prince's castellan, who was metal and parts and gears, the prince's own creation, but as refined as such a thing could be and who loved him as deeply as a forest spring, "how he forgets that his wounds hurt."

So it was that the iron-hearted prince and the weary soldier were in the glass chamber, and they listened to the robber girl's story with great interest, from the prince, and compassion, from the soldier.

"I have heard," said the prince, "of this frost that spreads like cold fingers, and takes loved ones far away." He winked at the robber girl. "Who are we to turn away a beautiful spy?"

He was one of the first to name her so.

"We must help you," said the soldier in a voice so firm and good that it was no question that everything would be arranged.

They offered the girl silks and satin and jewels beautiful to behold. 

"You shall go to the north as a queen," said the seneschal, who, the girl noticed with an uncharacteristic flush, had a spray of freckles across her face like a dusting of gold. She was a formidable woman, but the robber girl knew what it was to be someone you were not, and shook her head, preferring to keep her own attire.

They offered the doctor all the riches of the prince's kingdom, the true ones of the mind, and he was not so humble as the robber girl, for he had been hungry for such things for a long time, and soon joined the prince in lively discourse over this invention and that, until all the palace was cluttered with their clever, half-made things and intricate scrawls, and the soldier could only smile in wry indulgence.

The girl told them what the one-eyed man had whispered to her, and the prince looked at her with eyes bright and eager, as if his heart were as light as air. Soon, he mused, he would be king, and tied to his kingdom, but would it not be a great adventure to go north with brave souls and see how the frost was made?

The robber girl was not given to smiles, for she had red in her ledger that had bled into her hair, but she smiled now, and north they all went. 

 

**~The Women in the North~**

As the winds blew colder, and they all wrapped themselves in fur, they came upon an austere house with blades crossed over the threshold. Inside was a great warrior with inky hair that whipped about her in the fierce wind, and sleek armor that was well-cared-for. Her beauty was the beauty of the north, sharp and unforgiving, for her eyes were dark jewels and her teeth very white and sharp in the snow. In her hands was death in the snowy cave, and in the arc of her blade was the sweet, dark sleep of the lonely wood. She listened with great eagerness to their story, eyes lighting, for she was a shield maiden, and the thought of battle made her blood sing.

"I know of this threat," said she, "that creeps south and snatches those dear to you from their beds. It is the work of the Frost King, who holds court at the roof of the world."

"Do you know him?" asked the robber girl.

"I know his brother," said the shield maiden. "He is brave - " and her eyes darted down " - perhaps to a fault, and longs to see his brother home."

"How do we find him?" asked the iron-hearted prince, who was always interested in how things came to be made and what paths they took.

"Go north," said the shield maiden. "Go where your heart turns cold, and then further still, where you almost forget everything that you love, and beyond that place, that is where the Frost King rules."

Her words brought a chill to all gathered, and seeing them silent, she took pity and gave them her silver shield with many ancient runes. She flicked her wrist, and a wicked-looking dagger flashed against the cold surface, carving strokes unknowable.

"Take this with you. There is one who may be able to help."

The shield was small, but it somehow kept them warm as the winds grew fiercer and their hearts began to harden. As they faltered, the robber girl plunging her small hand into the snow to keep her balance, only to be pulled upright by a great lady with golden hair that shone like the sun, tall and regal in the snow. She looked to the silver shield and heard their story with a kind smile. It seemed that the warmth of all mothers was somehow in her far-seeing gaze, and as one, they felt their burden lightened.

"The shield maiden has asked me to give you the strength of a hundred men to overcome the Frost King, but you have that already, and it will not be enough." She looked to the doctor, who hunched in upon himself, hands twisting.

"She has asked me to give you wisdom that would not be wasted, but that too you have, and it will not be enough." Beneath her soft hand, an iron heart glowed hot.

"She has asked me to give you the courage, not of a perfect soldier, but a good man. You are rich in courage, but still, it is not enough." The soldier met her gaze squarely though he shivered in the driving snow.

"She has asked me to give you conviction, and even that will fail you without something else." She stroked the sleek black wing of the crow, who had trailed silent and loyal. For a moment, he was a clear-eyed man with a faint smile.

"Do you have love, little robber girl?"

"Love is for children," said the robber girl, brittle in the cold. "I owe him a debt."

"And that is strong too," said the golden queen kindly. "I hope it is a deep debt, for my son is not one to forgive a wrong. I can give you no power that you do not already have."

 

**~The Frost King and His Brother~**

And now we must see where the boy in the nest had been. In truth, he thought not of the robber girl at all, and would never have dreamed that she was so close to the Frost King's court. He was so cold that his eyes had frosted quite blue and he thought himself very content where he was. There was no joy in the Frost King's court, which was empty and vast and very lonely. Sometimes the Frost King appeared to feel the boy's strong heart or to bid him to hunt him the scarce game that still ran in that cold land.

His eyes were as deep and lonely as his kingdom, and very dark. At times, he sat brooding over a mirror black and smooth like the winter ice at midnight. On the coldest days, when even the ice shivered where it stood, he would take flight toward lands in the south, to pluck away others who had frost in their hearts. Not all of them became his favorites as the boy in the nest had, and so the land was freckled with the cold graves of those who had never said goodbye.

On such a day, the robber girl came to his court, pale and lovely in her white furs, her hair like a splash of blood over the frozen land. She trailed the doctor, the soldier, the prince, and the loyal crow, all brave but not enough as the golden queen had said, for who better to know the cruelty of a Frost King than his royal mother? She saw the boy sitting in the lonely hall of ice, his lips moving silently as if he were counting the snowflakes as they fell, so still he might have been frozen himself. But the robber girl had traveled the whole world in search of that familiar face, and she knew him at once. She fell upon him not with a cry, but silently, as was her way, and grasped him tight. He was frozen still, unmoving in her grasp as if she were only a whisper beside him.

She cried his name. "Do you not know me?"

"Do you think he does, little girl?" said the Frost King at her back, for he knew the shadows as intimately as she, and could travel paths unknown to many men. Around him the ice grew sharp and the snowflakes larger and larger until an army of gleaming spears and blank, frozen faces stood before the robber girl and her friends. The iron-hearted prince grasped the doctor's hand, as the robber girl had in the hut and squeezed it once. He meant, I trust you, and both the doctor and what grew inside him understood the weight of it. He had the strength of a hundred men, and these soldiers of snow and ice were no match for one such as he. The soldier with his summer heart and the prince with his wisdom not wasted, fought side by side in the whirling storm.

The Frost King turned on the girl, his dark eyes furious, his rage so hot that the blue had bled from his skin so he was pale all over, something of his mother's regal grace in the way he stalked towards her. His secret tore at the cold place where his heart had been, but all mothers left their stamp, even the ones who never bore their sons.

"Do you think you can erase what you have done?" he hissed.

The girl shook her head.

"Do you think you can wipe away the blood by saving the life of one no more virtuous than yourself?"

The girl took a step back in the snow and the Frost King followed.

"You will have him back, little girl, but he will destroy you, slowly, intimately, in every way that you fear." He gripped her sharp chin in his pale, strong fingers. "And when you are ruined and dead, I will allow him to see what he has done, and I will _crush his heart_."

She looked him right in the eye as she drew her knife. "You're a monster."

His gaze flew for only a moment to the doctor whose shadow was so large in the snow, but the robber girl had never needed more than a moment to strike. Though he had no heart to bleed, it was enough to stagger him, so that she lept through the snow to where the boy sat frozen still. When he looked into her eyes, there were all of the Frost King's red words curdling slick in his, and she almost recoiled at seeing the echo there, but they had traveled to a great many places and killed a great many things, and even drawn each other's blood, and this was no different you see. Arm for arm, blade for blade, they fought in the snow until it bloomed carmine with their effort. Sometimes none can be so cruel as those tied by love, though it may be for children, and they hurt each other now, in every way they knew the other feared, until they tumbled into the snow, breathless and exhausted.

Perhaps it was the living breath upon his cheek, or the robber girl's blood, which had soaked into the scarlet of her hair, hot upon the delicate frost, but the ice in the boy's heart began to melt until the blue frost faded from his eyes and he looked with wonder at her, fierce and savage and lovely in the snow, and breathed her name with a voice so soft it could barely be heard over the wind.

The girl took his face into her small hands, and he was perfectly still when she hit him with all her strength. He dropped limp onto the frozen ground, limbs loose in her grasp, and safe. The sky split with lights of unearthly beauty as thunder raged and brilliant lightning raged across the vast, gray expanse. She saw that the others had stopped their fierce battle, not because she had the boy at last, but because the Frost King too was huddled in the snow, his face in the hands of another.

You see, sometimes two stories are actually one. The first heart that the Frost King had taken had been his own, consumed with hate and loneliness until he was hungry for others. And strength was not enough, nor wisdom, nor a good heart, nor even conviction, which the crow had calmly told him he lacked, before the frost struck like a snake, taking the light from his eyes until he lay an ordinary man, still and small and silent in the snow. But his brother, his golden brother who had fought him so fiercely as to shake the world, he did not yield in the face of anything, nor would he start now.

"Come home, little brother," he said, quite wretched. "Our mother mourns you."

"Your mother," said the Frost King, his misery bleeding fresh out into the snow.

"You are wrong," said the golden prince who had chased his brother through fire and lightning to this sad, cold place, and found him at last, as the robber girl had. 

And perhaps for a moment, the Frost King was once again a clever boy with a silver tongue, who had discovered a terrible secret, looking to his brother for something he did not know. He bowed his head, even as the robber girl's boy awoke in her lap and wept against her bloody hair.

"Do you know," he begged of her, "what it is to be unmade?"

But it was a question given flight only because he needed her to feel the words. He knew that she did. He knew her, ledger and all, sharp as a thorn and twice as fierce, a girl made for sorrow, who had shed warm blood to make him whole. In that cold place of graves and frost, it was later said that they had saved all the world from the frost that stole children and lovers and good-byes into the winter storm, so that the empty places left behind were colder than even the graves. That clever boy who found the frost would have eaten the world as surely as the doctor's beast. It was said that the love of a brother carried the day, or the love of a lowly robber girl for a boy who liked open skies, or the love of blood for snow, sun for frost.

But this is not a story about innocent love, nor is it even a story about the ties of blood, for none of them were kin, not even the Frost King and his brother in the end. What the one-eyed man had told the robber girl, what she in turn had told the doctor, the iron-hearted prince, the soldier, and all the others, was that there had been an idea, that a group of remarkable people, lonely in their floating cities and great palaces and mean huts, might come together to fight the battles that others could not.

So perhaps it is a war story, a war of hearts, a war of debts, a war of those not bred for battle but who go bravely down nonetheless, of those with beasts inside and hearts not living, of those whose dear friends are long dead, who are broken and unmade and then made again. Of the man who had conviction, and a sweetheart waiting for him still. And the idea lived, for they did come together and see, as the iron-hearted prince had wondered, how the frost was made, and wrest it back into the storm. Though in the end, bloodied and upright, they went their separate ways, to all the far corners of the world, they waited, eager, to be called again. For at long last, it was summer.

 

 

~

**Author's Note:**

> [A pretty translation of _The Snow Queen_.](http://hca.gilead.org.il/snow_que.html)
> 
> I come by the melodrama honestly (sort of). The idea came from [this](http://lettiebobettie.tumblr.com/post/24790338444/you-know-nat-has-naturally-red-hair-and-she) utterly gorgeous set of Natasha and Clint illustrations, especially the one in the snow. Alternate title for this fic: too many feelings. [On LJ](http://rosekay.livejournal.com/123674.html)


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